Deimon Daycare
by splitting ends
Summary: Kobayakawa Sena is the new caretaker at Deimon Daycare. Although he loves children and his work, with an ex-convict for a co-worker and a five-year old armed with a semi-automatic of questionable origins - he's got his work cut out for him. AU.
1. Welcome to Deimon Daycare

**Deimon Daycare**

Sena _loves _his job. He just wishes he didn't have to dodge bullets, politely refuse sexual advances, and avoid other occupational hazards on a daily basis.

Eyeshield 21 ©Riichiro Inagaki and Yusuke Murata

I don't own anything.

**This is for you, Hadaka-san.**

**Edit: Special thank-yous to pianomaestra and Grissini for pointing out the glaring problems with the tense in this chapter. Thank you so much! I have (hopefully) fixed all the problems, but please continue to give feedback and correct my writing! I've been told I have a somewhat masochistic personality so I won't mind any criticism. :D**

* * *

"**Welcome to Demon Daycare!"**

Said the sign, but Sena double-checked anyway. He glanced down at the slip of paper, glanced back up, and became confused. _Huh, wasn't there an"i" between the "e" and "m"? Because the sign spelled –_

The decrepit door creaked open, and Sena came face-to-face with a set of _vicious-looking_ and _blindingly_ _white_ teeth. The creepy smile that framed them did nothing to slow his raging heartbeat, so acting on his acute sense of self-preservation, Sena screamed.

"**DEMON!**" The brunet performed a spectacular about-face and was about to book it, aiming for 4.0 for the 40, when his right leg was pulled out from under him. Sena landed face-first onto the concrete with a resounding _THWACK_. No one was surprised when he promptly blacked out, and the last thing Sena heard was a deep chuckle followed by, "Nice catch, Shin-kun."

When Sena woke up, he was tied to a chair.

The bright side was that his hands were free as well as his upper body. The not-so-bright-nearing-on-eternal-darkness side was that he was restrained from the waist down by a belt wrapped around his middle and two ankle ties. As soon as Sena looked around, he despairingly realized his situation. The office-like room was sparse, the only furniture being the two chairs and an ornate desk. Sena heard a cough and turned towards the source. In front of him and across the desk was a larger and more comfortable office chair. His brain worked overtime, computed the signs (_tied to a chair, dimly lit room, facing back of a large and ominous chair_), and swiftly reported, "_You are a dead man."_

In his plain wooden seat, Sena cowered.

He heard a noise, like someone shifting in a large, ominous chair. Then, a voice asked, "Do you know why you are here, Sena Kobayakawa?"

Sena was sweating bullets by now, feeling like an extra in _The Godfather_. He nearly bit his tongue when he answered. "N-no?"

The chair squealed as it slowly swiveled, and Sena flinched as if the sound was a whip whistling through the air. He heard the voice cough and then, "Sorry about that – this chair needs some oil."

That was anticlimactic. Sena expected something more along the lines of "_Any last words?"_ But he wasn't complaining – not at all. After an awkward pause, Sena hesitantly opened his eyes.

A very handsome face greeted him, composed of perfectly coiffed hair, dark eyes, a straight nose, and a friendly smile. Sena almost relaxed at the seemingly harmless sight, and then he remembered that he was tied to a chair. Unperturbed by the brunet's stiff and frightened posture, the handsome stranger introduced himself. "Kobayakawa-kun, I am Takeru Yamato –the director of Deimon Daycare."

Surprise lifted his eyebrows and dropped his jaw as Sena gaped at his to-be boss. _He can't be more than two years older than me, and I'm 21!_ Yamato discerned the silent question on the brunet's face and answered it with an easy-going manner, "I'm just the de facto boss, Kobayakawa-kun. I'm looking over the daycare as a favor to a friend. And I'm 23, by the way."

Oh, one mystery solved. Another thing popped into Sena's mind. "Deimon-?"

Yamato, with his amazing Q&A powers, resolved his confusion. "Ah, the sign – that's just some vandal's work." Yamato smiled widely, his pearly white teeth dilating Sena's eyes. But his temporary blindness could not deter the brunet's anger.

"Why would someone do such a thing?" Yamato chuckled in his seat. Sena was enticingly red, lips drawn in a full pout, and his eyes set in a determined, yet cute glower. Oh yes, he'll definitely keep _this_ one.

"Well, Sena-kun," Yamato began. Meanwhile Sena blinked. _When did Yamato-san start calling me –?_

Both explanation and thought were abruptly interrupted when the door came down and a man half-dressed as a dragon barged in. "Yamato, you fucker –!"

Sena blinked again and rubbed his eyes. He must've hit his head pretty hard in the fall. Sena peeked up from his hands. No, the semi-dragon man was still there, and he looked _mad_. Sena gulped, _Mad enough to kill someone_. He glanced at Yamato-san and bit his lip at the steely glint in the man's eyes. The friendly smile from before had vanished. _So this is what it means to be caught between a rock and a hard place_.

Yamato stared pointedly up at the intruder, hands folded and partially hiding his face. "Not now." The onslaught of authority in his voice urged Sena to prostrate himself before his shoes, all the while screaming, "_Yes sir! Forgive me, sir!"_ The dragon man was unfazed, his snarl still in place.

Twelve seconds into the stare down, with Sena starting to feel a bit dehydrated from all the sweating he'd done, Yamato broke eye contact in order to shoot a close-eyed smile to Sena. The brunet flinched– the glint of teeth was almost _sinister_.

"Let me finish my business with Sena-kun, and then we'll talk."

Dragon man grunted, ruffling the 'scales' of his ridiculous papier-mâché outfit. Sena tried hard to be more intimidated than humored, even if the scary man could easily blend in with a Chinese New Year celebration. Still, Sena breathed a sigh of relief when he turned and left, his flimsy tail trailing after him.

Then he looked up and caught Yamato's eyes, and he gulped. There was an uncanny sharpness in the man's eyes, like that of a shrewd business man. Yamato pulled out a drawer and plopped _stacks_ of papers onto his desk. Sena gaped – he had seen insurance claims smaller in size.

The keen, positively sinister smile was back on Yamato's face and the shaded windows added ominous shadows that partially hid his eyes. Sena wanted to run away, but then he remembered he was still tied down to a chair. Damn.

"Well then, where shall we start?"

* * *

Sena scanned his job application. He had gone over his salary negotiations, work schedule, and the professional conduct expected of him. Then he flipped the page. He eyes popped out at the printed letters.

"On the job accidents?" He cried, staring at the insurance form and waiver. 17,000 yen for an arm? Only?

Yamato merely chuckled and tried to distract his newest employee with a disarming smile. He even added a twinkle. "Oh, just certain precautions. Our kids have known to be quite... vivacious."

Sena stared at him blankly. Yamato merely smiled back and guided Sena's hand to the bottom of the page. "Just sign here, Sena-kun. It's nothing quite serious."

* * *

An hour later Sena emerged from the office with a liberated circulatory system and as a new employee of Deimon Daycare. Honestly, he never wanted to repeat that experience again. Negotiating with Yamato was like bartering with the devil.

The said demon poked his head out from the open door. "Sena-kun."

"Ah, yes, Yamato-kaichou?" Sena did not like the mischievous tone in his new boss's voice, so he stifled his uneasiness with politeness. (Upon retrospection, he should have ran when he heard it.)

"About your orientation," here Yamato pointed to a figure a little ways down the hall, cloaked in shadows. "Agon here will teach you the ropes."

The man grunted and walked, no – _swaggered_ toward Sena. The brunet looked up in wide-eyed recognition, it was the man from earlier, the one in the dragon ("Naga, actually," corrected Yamato) costume. Agon sneered at Sena. Sena, on the other hand, felt like a lamb sacrificed to slaughter.

Then Agon turned around, hands in the pockets of his leather jacket, and stalked down the hall. Yamato continued to smile even when Sena sent him a pitiful _Do I have to?_ glance. Seconds later, an angry bark reverberated down the hallway.

"Hurry the fuck up, trash!"

Sena was still stuck on the fact that the name "_Agon_" sounds eerily similar to the English word, "_agony_."


	2. Orientation

**Deimon Daycare: Orientation**

Eyeshield 21 © Riichiro Inagaki and Yusuke Murata

**Thank you:**

Nightmaric, Baka-no-desu-21, Stargazer, Nekokratik, Bar-Ohki, Kuraihikaru, Grissini, Sachiel Angelo, .sora, pianomaestra, inclement, RoxasIsReal13, peanutz, and Suzu no Miya.

**Thank you for all of your patience.**

* * *

Apparently, Agon's name could equate to "agony" because the very first thing he did was throw Sena into another room and growl at him, "Watch them." By now, Sena was sick of finding himself in unfamiliar rooms and at the mercy of more intimidating and muscular men than himself that, after summoning his reserves of courage and self-esteem, he curled up on his side and whimpered, "Okay."

Sena closed his eyes just as Agon slammed the door and wished he was back home, underneath his sheets and cuddling his kitten Pitt. Seconds ticked by before reality literally kicked in by means of a tiny, yet dirty sneaker. "Oi, is he even alive?" An equally tiny voice drawled, accompanied by two other high-pitched sounds.

"Let's hit him and see what happens!"

"Hn."

A sudden barrage of punches and kicks was enough to send Sena from his recumbent position to a more appropriately alarmed one. "Wha—hey! Ouch!" His eyes wide, the brunet scrambled for some purchase until a _whoosh_ sound caught his ears and his eyes tracked the end of a baseball bat. It was hurrying toward his head, and just as Sena was about to dodge, he saw head of hair in the line of fire. There really was no way to avoid the weapon, unless he wanted a broken child in place of his broken head. The choice was easy make, and Sena's body seemed to move on its own.

A cracking noise split the air like a burst of thunder.

During the resulting silence everyone stared at Sena.

"Whoa…so _cool_," gasped a dark haired child with odd fish-like lips. The two blonds next to him nodded, eyes wide in amazement, though one with a cross-shaped scar on his cheek was quick to retract the sentiment, replacing it with an impassive face.

Sena hesitantly opened his eyes, and his mouth dropped at the sight.

Luckily, the bat had caught the watch on his wrist, fracturing the glass face, but otherwise left his wrist mildly stinging, skin intact and not bruised. Unluckily, he had just broken the watch gifted to him by his friend Panther, whom he had met as a foreign exchange from America, and to whom he promised to return the gift when he eventually travels to the other's mother country.

_Kids are _strong_ these days_, he lamented the loss of the watch. _I'm so sorry, Panther._

Shortly after delivering a mental eulogy to the broken timepiece, Sena was literally slapped out of mourning by a small, pudgy hand. "Wha—" He blinked the stars away from his vision.

"FUGO," came an exclamation from his arms, and Sena looked down at the child, really a rather round baby, he apparently rescued. "HERO," shouted the baby, and he grinned a gummy smile up at the brunet. Sena practically melted.

"Aww! Now what's your name, little gu-GYAA!" Sena yelped as the wooden bat from before was pointed at his face, the fish-lipped toddler grinning at him from the other end.

"THAT. WAS. REALLY. COOL," he breathed, barely containing his excitement. He lasted nearly twenty seconds before he exploded in action, violently re-enacting Sena's 'daring' rescue. "You were like—and I was like— _swoosh_ and _foom_ –then you went _zoom_, like a, a—"

"Hurricane?" Prompted the blond boy with the cross-shaped scar.

"Bullet?" Offered the other blond from behind a copy of _Shonen Jump_ _Weekly_.

"GHOST," the fish-lipped boy finally decided, and his two friends shared a look of well-experienced exasperation.

Sena smiled, although it appeared as half a grimace, as he gingerly stopped and eased the wooden bat from the child's hands, nodding patiently as the boy continued to run his mouth while struggling to keep a firm grip on the squirming baby in his arms. Sena had learned from his younger brother that anything near an excitable child with a baseball bat was susceptible to severe property damage. Over the years, Sena had grown sick of compensating for it.

"Um, well," Sena surveyed the group of children around him, some staring at him in awe, others seeming indifferent to his existence, and he attempted to curb his cringe into something resembling a friendly smile.

"Let's start with introductions," Sena said, once he finished rounding up his charges into a semi-circle-and/or-oval. "I am Kobayakawa Sena, and I am your new head teacher." A hand shot up in the air. "Yes?"

"Have you went to jail?" The fish-lipped boy questioned, and the other two boys flanking him raised their eyes in similar curiosity.

Sena blinked. "Um, no, I can't say I have." All three of them looked severely disappointed. Sena tried to ignore that. "So, what about you guys?"

"Yukimitsu Manabu," piped up a boy to his left, and Sena wondered if he should be worried about the receding hairline the four or five year old already sported. "Please take care of me, sensei."

Sena smiled, touched by the polite note in the boy's voice. He returned the bow, "Please take care of me as well." Leaving Manabu-kun with a bright smile, Sena eyed the next boy with expectant eyes.

"Satake Yohei," murmured the boy, too absorbed in throwing a small basketball in the air to pay Sena any more attention. The next boy quickly introduced himself, pink lightly dusting his cheeks, "I'm Yamaoka Kenta…"

Kenta-kun fidgeted, which Sena took as a sign that he had more to say, and Sena smiled in encouragement. The boy grinned, cheeks blazing, and blurted, "Sena-sensei, you look like Kago Ai-chan when you smile!"

It took Sena several moments to calm down the resulting laughter and comfort a sniffling Kenta-kun, who was being tormented because of his apparent preference for older women– and Sena. ("Kenta-kun, it's okay to like _like_ Ai-san, that only shows your…mature taste.")

After the… unique introductions of Omosadake Futoshi-kun, an overly fed child who deemed it too tiresome to even open his eyes, Komusubi Daikichi-kun ("DAI!" exclaimed the baby from his spot on the floor), and Taki Natsuhiko-kun, who promptly displayed his flexibility through weird contortions of his body, Sena finally reached the trio.

"Togano Shozo," grunted the glasses-wearing blond. He raised the open magazine, though his eyes never left the pages. "I like manga, especially Shonen Jump series." Sena smiled in greeting, though inside, he wondered why a four-year old would need tinted glasses _inside_ a building.

"Kuroki Koji," crowed the fish-lipped boy, who proudly thumbed his chest in his depiction of a strong pose, "Master of Mario Kart, Triple Gold Medalist of the Sonic Olympics, and the King of Games!"

Sena grinned at the prideful declaration, despite Shozo-kun grunting his disapproval ("The King of Games is Yugi, numbnut.") while the other boy with the cross-shaped scar rolled his eyes.

The last child stood up, and even though he only came up to his shoulder, Sena was taken aback by the sheer challenge burning in his eyes. The boy folded his arms, and Sena envisioned the child several years down the road, in the same pose, but as a fully recognized delinquent. "I'm Jumonji Kazuki, and I don't like you."

"Um…" Feeling surprised and a little more than appropriately fearful for a man of his age, Sena edged back, only to softly collide with a hard object. Startled, he broke eye contact Delinquent-kun, er, Kazuki-kun and widened his eyes at the boy he had knocked to the floor. "I'm so sorry," Sena apologized, reaching a hand out to help the child up, "I didn't see you."

The boy rubbed his shaved head, giving Sena a weary smile. "It's okay, sensei, it's okay. I'm used to it." Then he bowed, "My name is Invisible—I mean, Ishimaru Tetsuo. Please take care of me, sensei."

As Ishimaru sat down, Sena made a quick head count. "Oh, there are only ten of you," he observed with relief. He wouldn't be able to handle another student.

Then, Manabu-kun popped that bubble.

"Actually, there are two more students. Raimon Tarou, or Monta-kun, is sick at home after he ate some expired banana pudding, and the other student—" There was a tense pause where Manabu-kun took a shuddering breath, and a weird emotion shot down Sena's spine, a feeling that was part primordial fear and part apocalyptic. Then, as Manabu-kun shifted, the lights in the room casted a flash upon the boy's shining brow, and in that flash, Sena glimpsed a flashback of his life. Or maybe it was just the firing end of a spark gun.

_BANG. _And Sena was sent tumbling halfway across the room at a speed only reached when one was either extremely determined or shit-scared out of his mind. It was easy to guess which of the two the brunet currently felt.

"Kekeke, I am Hiruma Yoichi, you fucker." A child grinned down menacingly at the sprawled man. Their eyes met, and Sena thought he just saw the eyes of Satan, but the thought quickly passed as the brunet recovered.

Reclining into a crouch, Sena tussled his brown locks, messing with the already tangled spikes, before holding out the other hand to the apparently unimpressed five-year old. Even if he was more than marginally cowed by Hiruma-kun, Sena still believed in making a good first impression.

"Hello, Yo-kun –" Hiruma's pointed ears twitched at that. "My name is Kobayakawa Sena, and I'm the new teacher here." Sena replaced the fear hanging on his face with a genuine, if slightly shaky smile. "Please take care of me." Hiruma, in response, merely popped a mint green bubble. Sena wanted to hazard a guess and believe it was the child's stamp of approval, despite Hiruma's critical eyes stating the opposite.

Finally, Hiruma grinned, and Sena felt a light weight placed in his hand, then a quick shake, before Hiruma cackled away.

"Welcome to Deimon's Devil Bat class, kekekeke!"

Sena smiled softy, almost endearingly at the speeding child, ignorant of the lingering weight still clutched in his hand. _Oh, he's not such a bad child after all –_

The mini-grenade exploded and threw Sena across the hallway in a ringing _boom_.

A number of children screamed and ran, turning the daycare center into a wild menagerie as some kids hid and cried like Kobanzame ("Osamu-kun, please come out from under there. Mizumachi-sensei is not a hiding place."), hollered in aptly timed sequence ("HA?" "HAA?" "HAAA?"), or cowered on impossibly high landings, refusing to come down unless certain demands were met ("Ikkyu-sama needs oni-comfort, from an oni-cute girl sensei!").

Among the chaos, Sena blinked away the ash that he assumed was a composite of the bomb and his singed flesh. He thanked whatever deity who cared to listen that the bomb had only been one of those do-it-yourself types, made from papier-mâché and flammable chemicals. Then a hissing noise invaded his ears, and Sena turned his head to notice the small, spherical ball rolling past him, its wick rapidly shortening.

Sena guessed it was about time to fill in some life insurance forms.

* * *

**Note: **All the daycare kids will be addressed by their first names after their initial introductions, unless they share the same first names (I can think of one case already), but if you guys, the reviewers, think it's easier to read if **the kids' first names are used only in dialogue but addressed by last names in the narration**, please tell me so in your review or PM. :)

Obviously, Hiruma is the exception (bias? what bias?).

As for pairings... does puppy love count? ;)


End file.
